A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM @ WILLIAMSTOWN THEATRE FESTIVAL, 7/1/10

by Michael Eck
Sepcial to The Times Union
WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS. – “Oh, Thespis, we place ourselves in your hands.”
And so it begins, both a play and a season.
Williamstown Theatre Festival is opening its 2010 mainstage slate with a tribute of sorts to Williams College graduate Stephen Sondheim, who turned 80 in March.
Jessica Stone’s production of “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum” is, in a word, hilarious. It’s also tuneful.
Comedy tonight, indeed.
Stone is clearly not interested in leaving any laugh unspent, and neither is her positively zany cast, which in a nod to Roman tradition (and mostly as a way to get more laughs) is entirely populated by men.
If you were hoping for hot, young courtesans, you won’t find them here, at least not out of drag.
The play itself nods to — or skewers — Roman tradition, and Sondheim and book writers Bert Shevelove and Larry Gelbart have plenty of fun making up names for characters, making up puns to go along with them and slamming French farce and big Broadway songs against older forms.
Christopher Fitzgerald leads the cast as conniving slave Pseudolus, who’s constantly trying to find new ways to buy, borrow or steal his freedom.
Ftizgerald is rubber-faced and wacky, and he has a real knack for tossing a wink to the audience when the shenanigans get really crazy, which is often.
The opening number — the classic, aforementioned “Comedy Tonight” — for example, is side-splitting, in no small part to Stone’s habit of piling even more shtick on top of a script loaded with it.
Fitzgerald also makes a habit of passing various props to conductor Gary Adler, ensconced in a pit in the middle of the stage floor. And you can be sure Stone gets mileage out of having various players almost fall into the pit. It’s actually easy to lose track of how many running gags this production has, and few of them are let downs.
Fitzgerald is surrounded by a bevy of boys, some buff, some blubbery.
Graham Rowat is the preening, barbarous captain, Miles Gloriosus; David Costabile is the shady businessman, Lycus; and David Turner is the virginal object of nearly everyone’s desire, Philia.
Josh Grisetti plays fellow slave, Hysterium, and grabs a second act spotlight with the “Lovely” reprise. It’s a funny song and Grisetti makes it funnier with his winsome, insistent delivery.
Other standout songs include Fitzgerald and Bryce Pinkham’s duet on “Free,” the Jeremy Shamos-led “Everybody Ought To Have a Maid” and Rowat’s “Bring Me My Bride.”
But, despite Sondheim’s agile work, the songs in this show are all meant to serve the comedy more than to be vocal showpieces.
And Stone — again — has every actor inject as much mirth as every tune can hold.
Even the curtain call is trumped up with trickery. After the initial bow, the entire cast slowly returns for a sort of instant talent show, with jugglers, ukulele players and the like.
This “Forum” is flat-out fun.